Your Pay Is About To Go Up (gawker.com)

The Department of Labor's overtime rule is expected to be updated some time later this summer, and when it does, you will soon be entitled to overtime pay if you make less than $50,000 per year. According to Gawker, "It now appears that even if you are a salaried employee or some sort of 'manager,' you will still be entitled to time-and-a-half pay for working more than 40 hours per week, as long as your total salary falls under the threshold." How did they come to this conclusion? Gawker points out that the Department of Labor promotes a Wall Street Journal story which says that "The threshold would be increased to $970, or $50,440 annually. That level is about the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for salaried workers." Hamilton Nolan writes, "This rule has been a matter of political contention for years. But now that it is actually approaching, its import is becoming clear: overtime pay, which has long been isolated to a minority of workers, is about to be extended to almost the entire middle class."

Comments

Re:Whose pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do I make under $50K, this won't even affect me.
I make an hourly wage. I was already eligible for overtime--although my employer hasn't approved any overtime hours in years.
This site has a large audience, and we come here based on interests rather than employment.

Re:This Is Why I Work for Lots of People

[Radical Moderate]

"There's no way for the government to set employee / employer agreements in such a way that everyone benefits. "

"Everyone" isn't supposed to benefit. The low-wage workers who were getting screwed out of their wages benefit. The employers who were screwing them lose. Not everything has be win-win to be worth doing.

Re:No, that means your pay is about to go down

[fermion]

I know young store managers that are on salary around $25K. The hours they work for that money means they make little more than minimum wage. Some of them are trying to go to school. For them the benifit is going to be working few hours for the money. They may be cut back to $10 an hour, which means they will have $15 overtime, which means they may have to work 45 hours a week to make the same money instead of 50 like they do now.

Or they may just suck it up and pay managers $50K, since keeping up with hours for managerial staff is kind of cumbersome.

Where this is going to be a stickler is actually some government jobs. For instance some places do not pay teachers $50K yet they are exempt employees. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.